


Studies in Body Language

by misscam



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-29
Updated: 2008-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscam/pseuds/misscam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Sometimes, it takes the body to tell you what the brain can't.</i> [Adama/Roslin, Tigh, Kara, Lee, Others.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Studies in Body Language

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for most of season four up to and including "Revelations". Thanks to siraj for a kind step-in beta job.

Studies in Body Language  
by **misscam**

Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.

II

Laura doesn't know her body anymore.

It feels foreign, as if the cancer has claimed it already in spirit if not in flesh. Looking at her hands, the skin feels almost estranged, divorced. Her bones, her flesh, her hair. They're all going to fail her, death by body while the mind watches.

It's not such a strange thing she is detatching, she knows. It still _feels_ strange, as if she's been halved. She is dying, and her heartbeat doesn't feel her own anymore.

She can almost feel his more strongly. His, Bill's, Admiral Adama's hand on her back and another holding her palm against his chest. A half embrace, as if he's afraid a whole might break her.

"Stay here," Bill says. It's the second invitation he's made, and she knows it entails her sleeping in his bunk and he sleeping on the couch and he's not trying to seduce a dying woman with offers of accommodation. That would be easier to turn down, far less intimate than sharing cancer. "You can stay here during treatments."

Everyone will wonder, Laura doesn't say and the President thinks. Maybe she'll wonder a little too.

"Yes," she agrees, because she's too tired to fight him and everything else too. Just this little thing. It's even sensible, his quarters close and guarded and large enough for two. Yes. It can be sensible.

It has nothing to do with how her breath catches when he kisses her forehead, or how warm his breath feels against her skin.

Laura does know her body still. She's just not listening to it.

II

All the years of watching the edge between life and death, Doc Cottle finds himself usually able to tell who might live or who might die among his patients.

Death. It's something in their posture, when they're too tired to fight. Something in how the spine curves when the burden is too much. Something in how the heartbeat feels fainter when the heart is just not into it. He's learned the signs.

And yet, he cannot tell for President Laura Roslin.

At times, she almost seems to will death to come, doing diloxin just for time and not for hope. Her mother died, he knows, and Laura seems almost to have the ghost of her share the body. There is no fight in a ghost, only past regrets.

If there was only that, he would be sure Laura would die.

But there is also the strength in her spine, her head held high and the brightness in her eyes when Admiral Adama is there. Yes. There is that too.

Admiral Adama reads to President Roslin while people live and die around them, a shelter between the covers. Love, Cottle knows. They might not have said it, but bodies speak a language he's spent a lifetime reading.

Love doesn't cure cancer. But without something to live for, death is just another sleep.

Life. Death. He can't tell, because Laura Roslin still walks the edge between, and they're all waiting to see where she might fall.

II

Skin is better than steel, Hera dreams. Everyone wants skin. Mommy's people. Daddy's people. Steel versus skin, it used to be. Now it's just skin. The same.

It's better, the dreams tell her. Skin against skin, there can be life. Skin against skin, mommy and daddy dance and made her, too.

Hera likes her skin, her body. She runs with it, delights in it, prefers it. Steel is out. Skin is the future. Shared.

She dreams a lot about skin. Six's skin, picking her up. Six loves in skin, not always in heart. Mommy's skin, always so afraid for her. Mommy sees past shared skin and still see differences. Laura's skin, bleeding for all of them. Laura always bleeds for them, even when she doesn't have to.

Hera never dreams of the Admiral, and wonders why, because his skin always seems so joined to Laura's, like mommy and daddy's dance, only with a different tune.

Everyone dances to a different tune, Hera is learning. Shared skin, different songs and sometimes, a voice goes silent and the chorus is never the same again.

Skin isn't forever, Hera has still to learn. Maybe that's not so much better than steel after all.

II

The Old Man wants the President, Saul can tell. If he didn't know already, Bill's hands up her skirt would be a dead give-away.

Admiral's quarters, Laura pinned between the wall and Bill, her head on his shoulders and her eyes closed. Which is a good thing, because if she were to open them and see Saul, awkward would gain new meaning.

Bill has his back turned to the door, and with Laura's one leg lifted against his hip and his face against Laura's neck, it would probably take a lot to get his attention. Saul doesn't even try, leaving as quietly as he entered and making sure the guards let no one in this time.

He isn't really surprised. Not when he's known the Old Man thirty years, and have seen it just by the look of Bill's face when he looks at the President. Desire. It's easy to see when you know what to look for, and have had thirty years to hone the skill. Hell, Saul thinks he might know Bill better than he now knows himself.

Cylon Saul Tigh. He doesn't even want to know that man. Doesn't try. Easier to hang on to human William Adama, even if that comes with Laura Roslin and her legs.

Or maybe consider it a perk, Saul decides and goes to find a new bottle elsewhere.

II

Lee is trying to figure out when his father fell for Laura Roslin.

In his head, there's a film of all the times he can think of them in a room together, and he plays it again and again, trying to find The Moment, or just something to indicate a change. Something he could have seen to know his father would choose to stay behind in a raptor on the faint hope she still lives.

Lee isn't sure he can find the change. Oh, when he remembers them in the beginning, it is clear change has happened. They've softened with each other, getting comfortable in each other's space, the little things strangers do in the presence of strangers fading from the scene. There's his father's anger and attempt to shield her at the trial. There's her staying in the Admiral's quarters. There's his father's own admission, still echoing.

Because he can't live without her. But when, when did Laura Roslin become life to his father and why didn't he see it?

A son should. So much time spent adapting to the big change – humanity's shining Twelve Colonies to rag-tag fleet of survivors – that day by the day, he hasn't looked. Hasn't wondered what his father's softening meant or the President's increasing time spent on Galactica could entail. Hasn't wondered why their bodies seemed so relaxed together in a room, as if the bodies were already where the hearts soon would be. A son should know. This son didn't pay attention.

But then, Lee considers, maybe not even his father did. Body language changes and the brain is slow to catch up until suddenly, another person is all you can see of your future and you can't tell when it happened because it never did. It just became so.

Lee knows that. He's just been trying very hard not to see it himself.

II

D'Anna watches Admiral Adama in Laura's arms, and knows they now have a weapon.

No Fleet waiting, just the Admiral, and she knows why from the way he holds Laura, careful but still fierce, as if air between them is still too much distance.

Good. If she holds a hostage he loves, he might break more easily.

Human bodies are a weapon, D'Anna knows. So frail. So dying with every breath. So dear. A weapon. Admiral Adama loves Laura Roslin, and he needs her body to live. A weapon.

A weapon that can turned on herself too now, D'Anna doesn't know yet. She will.

Their bodies are the same now, human and Cylon.

It takes you down with it.

II

Sometimes, it takes the body to tell you what the brain can't, Kara observes faintly.

Earth sucks.

Nobody dares speak it, but everyone is screaming it loudly nevertheless. Just not in words.

Lee. Lee with a look on his face she's seen once before and known she was the cause of. She hopes this time she isn't, hopes until it strengthens the dread that she is.

Tory. Tory with her right hand in her left, clutching it as if no one else will. It is no less lonely as a Cylon, Kara knows. After all, she was suspected as one.

Sam. Sam with his shoulders slumped and his shadow dragging. Sam, who she should hate but can't, can't so very loudly.

D'Anna. D'Anna with the wind in her hair, looking almost wild. A wildcard. They may all end up with a losing hand with her in the game.

Roslin. Roslin, so carefully no expression at all, so carefully blank it speaks volumes.

The Old Man. The Admiral, angry, tired, old. So old Kara has to look away, but Roslin doesn't, never stepping away and never leaving his vicinity. A pair. Play enough cards and you know a pair when you see one.

Earth sucks, but some things hold, and Kara keeps her eyes on the horizon, feeling Sam and Lee both look at her.

She isn't sure what to tell them yet.

II

Bill finds Laura in the dark.

His quarters, lights off, the only sign she is there the faint sound of her breathing. He wonders faintly if she's turned the lights off so he won't know how she feels, but she can't hide that. Her breath gives her away, drawn-out in one moment, ragged the next, not submitting to the control she clearly wishes.

He doesn't tell her how the last recon went, what they've found on the planet this time. Not yet. The President will want to know and the Admiral will tell her, but they're not in the room right now.

Laura is tense when he reaches out to touch her, the steel in her making even her skin feel a little cold. A breath, and her back relaxes against his; he kisses her shoulder as she tilts her head to the side and lets hands and shadows caress her skin alike.

Even in the dark, he knows her body. The shapes and curves are familiar, mapped in his mind for any tactical situation required. He knows where she likes his fingers gentle, where she likes them unyielding, where she likes his mouth most of all. He knows the pattern of her breath, when it rises and when it falls and when it pauses altogether.

It is no less intimate for being familiar, he thinks, the bone of her hip sharp brushing against his as she turns to face him.

"Tell me there's hope," she says, covering his larger hand with her smaller, brushing his knuckles lightly.

When he kisses her, he knows she's cried for the dead again, as he has. So much desperation. So many bodies lost and souls with them. And yet, yet so many still here. So many heartbeats still, and hers loudest of all when he brushes a palm against.

The body so treacherously wants to keep living, his first flight instructor once told him. The mind just can't help following. Even when you look frakked, you'll still fight to live. Good pilots listened to their bodies most of all.

Good pilots survived.

"There's life," he whispers, her body agreeing with him as he lowers his head to kiss the heartbeat in her skin and listen.

Life.

Humans just can't help but hear it.

II

FIN


End file.
